SOURCE: “Escape from Trublem: The Fiction of Gayl Jones,” in Black Women Writers (1950-1980): A Critical Evaluation, edited by Mari Evans, Anchor Press, 1984, pp. 249-57.

In the essay below, Ward discusses the importance of the characters’ thoughts and acts of thinking in White Rat, Eva's Man, and Corregidora.

In the American penal system, female prisoners are often subjected to more psychosexual abuse than their male counterparts. The same condition obtains, according to our most perceptive writers, in American society outside the prison walls. The abuse of women and its psychological results fascinate Gayl Jones, who uses these recurring themes to magnify the absurdity and the obscenity of racism and sexism in everyday life. Her novels and short fictions invite readers to explore the interiors of caged personalities, men and women driven to extremes. Her intentions seem less analytic than synthetic, the strategies of her fictions themselves being indices...